Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of The Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at The
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at fbr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Kyle Towns, author of The road
Less Traveled, Reclaiming Childhood for Christianity. Thank you so much
for joining us on this edition the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I want to start here because this is a fascinating
topic and I think the book will really be helpful
to a lot of our listeners who are trying and
as we all are, struggling to maintain christ filled lives,
faith centered lives. And I guess what I have seen,
particularly in the world of political reporting over the last
few years in this country in general, is this hunger
from people from Americans in particular. I've spent a long
time chasing a lot of shadows in their lives, and
I see this quest for answers, deep rooted answers, and
I do see a lot more people turning to faith.
Are we, in your estimation in a time of reawakening,
particularly in a christ centered life or the leaning toward
a Christ's centered life in this country?
Speaker 3: I do think that we are, because I think people
have seen the dramatic effects of following this secular herd
of sheep off a cliff, and it has now been
several generations or more of watching what happens when we
take in modern ideologies of parenting. We forsake Christian knowledge
of God's Word to direct our paths. And I think
that people want to have a change, and sometimes they're
just not sure how to how to get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and particularly for parents who are struggling with all
of the the electronic media, the social media, that digit everything,
in the brave new information super highway world that we've
experienced now for a generation plus, it's got to be
very daunting. I know it is personally as a dad
of three kids, so it certainly presents its challenges in
a world that is so opposed to the goodness of God.
How do you do that as a parent?
Speaker 2: How do you how do you handle screens or how do.
Speaker 1: You how do you navigate through this world where of
screens and of so many you know, messages, the wrong
messages coming through social media.
Speaker 3: I think it starts with a knowledge of God's word.
We have to be in God's word every day. It
says it's a light to our path, and if we
don't have that light, we're not going to know which
way we should be going.
Speaker 2: I think one of.
Speaker 3: The biggest misconceptions has been that God doesn't talk about parenting,
he doesn't talk about child raising, and that has led
to people feeling that this is just an open field.
There's really no clear direction for them. They just need
to kind of grasp at whatever their friends are doing,
whatever society's saying they should be doing. And if we
don't keep that primary and central in our lives, then
we're going to wander away from the past. So that
that is the first thing, and then the what I
really champion in the book is looking at evidence, look
at the facts and reality, the studies, and the statistics,
and take those into account when you are making your
parenting decisions, because there are clear consequences for a lot
of these things. Screen time would be a great example
just because something's done by a lot of people, it
doesn't mean that you also have.
Speaker 2: To do that as well.
Speaker 3: You can choose other options and other ways of raising
your children.
Speaker 1: Yes, your new book is really driven. It's not just
pontificating on you know, or talking about your experiences. It's
about your experiences through a biblical lens, through a New
Testament lens. Describe how you went about crafting the book
that way.
Speaker 3: So a little background about me that has it's pertinent
for this discussion is that I am the wife of
a military veteran. So we spent a number of years
going around the United States, traveling and living in different places.
We only spent about a year and a half or
two years in each location. And there were a couple
things that really struck me as we moved around. And
the first was the total deterioration of our moral code
in our society and how that has gone all over
the United States. It's not just in one pocket or another,
it's everywhere, and right has become wrong, good has become evil,
and vice versa. It's just flipped the other was actually
seen firsthand that the statistics that show that the youth
are growing up and leaving our church is real that
time after time after time going into churches and seeing
the white haired only or the very young, but not
seeing the twenty year olds, not seeing the thirty year olds.
And this is mostly in Protestant churches. I can't really
speak to Catholic churches, but it's a real problem in
Protestantism especially. And then the third thing that really drove
me to write this book was that we met a
lot of Christian families along the way from different backgrounds,
and it was the complete secularization of the Christian family unit.
Speaker 2: The fact that if you were to put.
Speaker 3: A Christian family, the average Christian family, next to the
average non Christian family, they would be virtually indistinguishable. And
that is from parenting ideologies, to priorities, their view of childhood,
their children's knowledge of Scripture. In every way, they were
just indistinguishable. And so I was looking for someone to
speak out in a holistic way about childhood that doesn't
just deal with spiritually, but deals with mentally and physically,
and does that based on reality. I think there's too
many There are too many parenting books out there which
discuss parenting in terms of experiences and emotions, and there
are a lot of parents like me that don't want
to hear that. To make decisions, we don't want to
make decisions based on someone's opinion. We want to make
decisions that impact our children for life based on something
more solid than that. And I waited. I put this
off for years to write this book. I didn't feel
up to the task. I was busy raising my children
and moving around. But I finally felt so compelled by
the absence, by this void of speaking out on this topic,
that I felt I had to pick up my pen
so to speak and write on it. And something I
want to say about that is I think that we
notice a lot of problems in our society. We notice
problems in maybe our political system and the ideologies there.
We notice problems in higher education. We know it's problems
in the judicial system, all these things, and it's like
looking at a tree and talking about the rotted branches
and not understanding that this comes down the root. This
is a root problem, and the root problem is how
we're raising our children. Because those children are growing up
and entering the judicial system, they are entering politics, they
are entering academia, and they are bringing with them a
continuation of the way that they have been raised. They
don't just magically change at eighteen and become you know,
critically thinking, god fearing, hard working young adults. They just don't,
you know, they continue in the way that they are going.
So it is vital that we talk about childhood, especially
early childhood, when they are so formative and malleable, and
we take advantage of this time instead of treating it
in sort of the second way, where you view early
childhood as an empty space, a period of time where
kids can't really do that much, they can't really understand
that much, don't expect anything of them, but just wait
till they get to school age and then you can
start doing something with them. And I'm saying no childhood,
early childhood especially, but all childhood is such an opportunity.
I mean, children are malleable, they're formative, they're intelligent, they're excitable,
and we need to take advantage of that as Christians, no.
Speaker 1: Doubt about it. And that is a for those who
really truly believe that there's you know, the kids just
sit there basically for the first few years of their life.
That's not only dangerous, that has I think led to
all kinds of problems you talk about, you know, our
judicial system, you talk about our political system. But two men,
any of our young people are entering the criminal justice
system because of a lack of a moral compass in
the home, because of a lack of a christ centered
meaning in the home. And I think about it, Is
it any it's sad? Was it any surprise that we
have seen the population of younger people absolutely decline in
the Christian Church, particularly when we take a look at
two now three generations of this movement in the public
school system. How much is the public school system responsible
for this getting away from a faith rooted life in
our American families.
Speaker 3: I think they are part of the problem, but I
shy away from placing too much blame there because I
think what we need to understand is as parents, if
you're putting your child in the school system, in a
public school system, then we need to understand that we
don't get out of our teaching and training as parents
by doing that. We are still the ones responsible for
their moral formation, and we are still the ones responsible
with ensuring that they know reality for what it is
that they know the truth. And so it's true. Education
massively forms the character of a child. I mean, it
is incredibly important, and I think we need to value
it a lot more than we do because of how
much it does form children. But the modern educational system,
the tenants and what it's built on, its philosophies are
all pretty antagonistic towards a Christian viewpoint. We've lost the concept,
for example, of objective truth and things that become incredibly subjective.
We have become our own god, so to speak, the
arbiter of truth, and this is very poisonous. There is
objective truth, obviously, and all truth leads to God because
He's a God of truth. So when you lose that
and you start putting other ideologies in its place, other
people's priorities, you know, the governments and whatnot, of course
it's going to impact and affect children. But the responsibility
of this is very much on the parents.
Speaker 1: No doubt about it. As Harry S. Truman once said,
the buck stops here, and it definitely stops with the parents.
We have seen that, and perhaps we'll talk a little
bit more about that later on in our conversation, but
we have seen parents taking back control of their parental rights.
That's been a very encouraging and successful movement in this
country over the last few years, and would like to
see more of that. But let me ask you this.
You worked in public education, sure for a number of years,
and you decided to walk away from that. In fact,
you got involved in, you know, in classical education. How
much of your work your experience in public education informed
your experiences and informed how you approached writing this book.
Speaker 3: So when I entered the teaching profession, I was twenty
years old, fresh out of college, and I taught. I
got a job in Inner City, DC, teaching sixth, seventh,
and eighth grade. I was on crutches at the time.
I was just this tiny little girl going into this environment.
I had no idea what to expect.
Speaker 1: That's a tough road going starting out being a fresh,
fresh faced teacher on crutches in an icy school.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I had never experienced the things that I
experienced there. I'd never had someone yell at me from
my face. I'd never witnessed fist fights. I It's just
it was. It was a huge learning curve from there
I did. I did take away some good things. I
definitely learned a lot about classroom management. But I saw
the deep need these children have for discipline and structure.
For I mean, their home lives were a wreck, and
obviously that had every single bit of impact on them
as they were struggling to go through the educational system.
And I moved from there to the Virginia Fredericksburg area
to teach in middle school again sixth, seventh and eighth grade.
And what really influenced me from my time there. I
did really enjoy teaching the children. I loved connecting with them,
but it was seen behind the doors, or behind the curtain,
if you will. So I got to see that this
idea of the specialist is kind of a facade.
Speaker 2: It's not true.
Speaker 3: So when you say, well, I'm not smart enough to
teach my children because I need to send them to
where they're going to have a specialist, you know, in
elementary and middle school, what actually happens is the teacher
who's teaching sixth grade math is told, guess what you're
teaching next year. You're doing seventh grade English in eighth
grade science.
Speaker 2: So what does that guy do.
Speaker 3: He goes and he reads the book and he follows
the book, which is exactly what you do as a
homeschool parent. Or you know other teachers do. In other environments,
you're given your curriculum. Sometimes you're allowed to create your curriculum,
but you have to follow it. So it's kind of
a if you read, you can succeed kind of thing
where they just do their best. It's a lot of
learning in the moment, you know. I noticed with teaching,
it wasn't my degree that really prepared me. It was
experiencing it. It was just going through it. So it
took away the mistiaque. It made me see teaching through
a different lens, one that anybody can do it. You
can do it, and you are capable. And then I
chose to leave the teaching profession because I wanted to
raise our.
Speaker 2: Children, and I definitely.
Speaker 3: Feel like that was the right choice, but not something that,
you know, I didn't feel like it was a wholly
negative experience. I think I took away some good things
from being in the public school.
Speaker 4: Have you been a victim of affinity fraud? The watch
Out on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day,
Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy
and how it affects your wallet. Although someone could look
like you, talk like you relate to you. Don't be
convinced you can trust them with money, whether it's your church, parish,
a union. Don't be a victim of a scam. Whether
it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street, it's
affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watch Dot
on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it you were tested by fire in
so many ways in those schools. I'm curious what you
think about the parental choice movement in America. It really
has grown explosively over the last thirty years in this country.
Is that a way to move beyond the generations that
we've seen of, in some cases, downright depravity in our
public school systems.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: I think it's a great option, a great thing for
parents to embrace because we have a unique situation in
America where we're able to have a lot of say
in our children's education. So it's great to see parents
stepping up to that and taking advantage of it. And
I know there's a big increase in the homeschool movement,
charter schools, etc. People are really looking for alternatives because
they see such a systemic problem within the public schools.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is Kyle Towns, author of The Road
Less Traveled, reclaiming Childhood for Christianity. It is soon set
for release, correct it is. You're just about there. It
is released released, Yes, yeah, excellent, And you can find
that just about anywhere.
Speaker 3: Huh yes, Amazon or at the publisher at wiffinstock dot com.
Speaker 1: Absolutely there is because your book is so centered in
the New Testament, in the Bible's teachings. I want your
take on where we stand on Matthew eighteen six. But
whoso shall cause one of these little ones who believe
in me to fail, it were better for him that
a millstone were hung about his neck, and that he
were in the depth of the sea. There are a
lot of millstones to go around out there. In my
humble opinion, there really are.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the central ones is the screen.
I'm not against screens. I don't think that there's somehow
evil in and of themselves. I think they could be
used to great good, and we're using a screen right now,
and they can be very good for education and many things.
But it is definitely a massive problem for children in
terms of talk about millstones influence. Right as Christians, we
need to really care about the content of what's going
into our children's hearts and minds because that forms their character.
And children right now in America are spending exorbitant amount
of time on their screens. As you know, eight to
twelve year olds are spending an average of five and
a half hours a day on entertainment entertainment through their screens,
which means if you were to compile those hours in
a year, they are spending about two and a half
months of twenty four hours on their screens of their
life a year. And it gets worse, you know, as
they get older. Thirteen to eighteen year olds are spending
about over eight and a half hours a day, which
is over four months of their life twenty four hours
on a screen. I mean, these are not small numbers.
These are massively impactful numbers. And then you look at
the at what they're seeing on the screens. You know,
the average American child is witnessing forty thousand murders by
the time they're eighteen and two hundred thousand acts of violence.
And that's not even that's not even going into the
video games and the situation with that where you have
ninety seven percent of teens are playing video games, and
two thirds of those video games are violent according to
Pew Research. So these things are shaping our children and
we have to acknowledge that and realize is that this
is a moral issue, something that we have to pay
close attention to. And you know, screens have a variety.
I call it a three prong put three prong issue. Right,
there's a physical consequence to just sitting there for hours
a day. Obviously, obesity is kind of an obvious one.
But then there's the mental and the spiritual. And we
haven't even gotten into the mental effects on children of
screens and the widespread developmental delays, the fact that it
prevents brain regions from connecting to one another, and it
does that by lowering the microstructural integrity of brain white
matter tracts, which means it basically children can't think as well.
It's basically handicapping children mentally, which is a big deal.
And it causes depression and anxiety, poor sleep.
Speaker 2: I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. ADHD.
Speaker 3: These are all well documented. You can go look up
the studies yourself, and there are Also some of them
are in my book from you know, well established sources
like JAMA Pediatrics, which is a monthly peer reviewed medical
journal published by the American Medical Association, places like that,
And you can go read these studies for yourself and
see that it's it's not even you could just say
one issue. It's not even the moral issue. It's just
it's a multifaceted problem that we really need to take
seriously and realize that, yes, when we're talking about a
millstone around the neck, screens would be one of the
major issues that we need to address within the Christian
family unit.
Speaker 1: And it became very institutionalized, didn't it. During COVID. That's good,
we had you know, so many tens of millions of
kids not only on screens for their education, you know,
out of fear or whatever. But then it's so much
time away from you know, and that's where parents really
really had to come in and really be in there,
and you know, their kids will try to get away
with what they can get away with, of course, and
you know, that became a very difficult moment for a
lot of parents. You know, you know, I don't want
to be a hypocrite in this area. I have struggled
with that as a parent too, weighing screen time for
the kids and very much worried about what's what's out there.
And I know I'm not alone. I know there are
parents out there. So so how do you do that?
How do you you know, obviously as a parent, you
are again the last you should be the last word
on this stuff. But it's a challenge. How do you say,
put away the screen and let us get away from
that and stay away from that as much as humanly possible.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, first of all, you can't look for
what other people are doing. I mean, you know there
is there is, there is one person you are not
looking to please man, but God. There is one person
or God who is the one that.
Speaker 2: You answer to. And that is it.
Speaker 3: So don't look for what is my neighbor doing, what
are my friends doing? Well, gee, all these other kids
are doing X, Y and z. But take a hard
look at what your child is doing and with screens,
and what is it that you think is the appropriate.
Speaker 2: Use of them? And then you have to be willing.
I think.
Speaker 3: Doctor Dobson, if I'm not mistaken, says that if your
child wants a fight, don't disappoint them. And that means
that if you sometimes you have to put on your
big girl pants or your big boy pants, and you
have to say, I am the parent, and even though
I know that this is going to be a fight
or this is going to be a problem and difficult,
I know what's best for you. And you may not
understand that right now, and I wish you did, but
you don't. And I'm doing this for your good. So
I am putting a limitation on this. I am telling
you this is how we're going to use screens in
our family. For my family, for example, we use it
for education. I have older children using it for some courses,
and we do it sometimes for entertainment. A vetted movie
that we know well right you can put on. But
I'm not letting them just surf the internet the dark
alley of the Internet and kind of do whatever they
want on their entering the realm of social media. And
I'm not doing that because I know reality and what
it is out there, and it's not worth the price.
I'm not willing to put my child on, you know,
the alter of free time for me, on the altar
of you know, everybody else is doing it, it's just
not worth it. They're too easily formed at this age.
You know, there was a fascinating study I have in
my book on social pressure and how much more easily
influenced children are the younger they are.
Speaker 2: So when they're exposed to.
Speaker 3: Whether it's ideologies, body image stuff, sexualization, whatever it is, violence,
those things are, they're not influencing the same way that
they are for people in their thirties, forties, and fifties,
and you know these this is this is influencing them
on a fundamental level. So when we know this about children,
we need to make our decisions for our family based
on that and just take one day at a time.
And we're all sinners. This isn't about creating some kind
of unrealistic expectation. I try to make that clear in
the book. This is about the recognition of reality, the
recognition that sin matters, it impacts the heart, and that
we are just going day by day, minute by minute,
with the Lord's help, attempting through him to raise our
children up in Him and resting confidently in that we're
not going to do it perfectly. We're not sinless, We're
not going to have sinless children, and that's not the point.
The point is simply that out of all the people
in the entire universe, the Lord who knit together that
child in the womb, the Lord who knew them from
the beginning of time, who knew all your sins and
your insecurities and your faults, he picked you to raise
that person made in His image. That is an awesome responsibility,
and only to do so for a limited period of time.
And so we want to just use that too, you know,
to the glory of God. We want to use that
time wisely. And that's the point.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, that is
its foundation, is a Christ centered life. A life of
love and love of your children comes with limits. It
comes with making sure that they understand that it's not
just your love, your parental love you're talking about, It's
about God's love. And that's that life question is so essential,
more essential than ever in a society that is beset
with death, so many abortions, so many people choosing abortions,
so many people rallying around on abortion on demand in
this country, so many people stealing those beautiful lives, How
do we get to a Christ centered life, which is
so much like I said, so much more important today
in a world surrounded by so much senseless death.
Speaker 3: Well, so I would say to that when we're going
back into childhood, that we have prioritized teaching children Bible
stories as if that kind of does the job. But
there's a specific promise with teaching them the Word of God,
which is that faith comes from hearing and hearing from
the Word of God. They need to be hearing the
words of their Lord from infancy, they need to be
hearing it from the second that you're listening to the broadcast.
They need to be hearing it daily. And the reason
that matters, and it has to do with your question,
is because we are not bad the physical world. We
are in a spiritual battle, and that is very clear
in scripture. We are fighting against the demons and the
unseen world, right of the spiritual world. And the Word
of God is a sword, is what it says. So
we want our children to have that sword, that metaphorical
sword to fight the spiritual battles because they are going
into this world that is first of all, ideologically flipped,
and this world that does.
Speaker 2: Have a huge it's obsession with death.
Speaker 3: I mean, we actually uphold it you know, we celebrate
it in a variety of ways, including and most especially
with abortion, and so the best way for us to
combat that is to equip our children from a young
age with knowledge about human life, knowledge about who takes it,
who gives it, the knowledge of the value of every
single human being. Because if you know Scripture, you know
that you are a person made in the image of
God from conception. So instead of hearing this kind of
thing from a parent or a teacher or a book,
it has a lot more weight when it's coming from
God himself, and it's powerful. So we want to make
sure that our children are internalizing this from the very
beginning so that they grow up incredibly rooted in that
and are able to go out into that world that
is filled with death and an obsession with it and
abortion and all these things, and they're able to affect
change positively because not only do they have the word
of God as their weapon against the false ideologies that
are coming at them in viewpoints, but they are also
able to think logically and critically, And that's where education
comes into all of this, and wanting to help our
children form their minds so that they are are able
to go out there and do every good deed that
God has in store for them.
Speaker 1: We're all children of God, we are all made in
the image of God. And the Bible is filled with
plenty of stories of children who have turned away from God,
who have left the flock. And there is of course
the story of the good Shepherd who goes after leaves
the ninety nine to save the one. How do parents
deal with a child? And so many parents in our
society are dealing with this, a child who has left
the flock, who has left God and family, and.
Speaker 2: You're talking to a child that has left the home. I imagine
I'm talking about both.
Speaker 1: Actually, there are parents who are experienced this with the
kids in junior high getting into the wrong groups, maybe
getting involved in drugs, or you know, making a lot
of bad decisions on that front. A lot of parents
have struggled this or when indeed the child leaves the home.
You know, I'm in a position right now. My wife
and I are Our oldest is heading off to college,
and we've tried to instill instill the values that we
share in this family. But you know, he's going to
be out there among a lot of different people. How
do you make sure that you know that the child
is not the prodigal son. If you will, it's not
out there whatever age they are.
Speaker 3: Well, I think there's two different issues here because you're
talking about a child under the roof of a parent
versus one that's not, and I think those are incredibly
different situations.
Speaker 2: We need to not feel.
Speaker 3: Powerless as parents when we have our children under our roof.
And I think that is an incredibly secular, modern ideological
viewpoint that says, basically, you're up a creek if your
kid is you know, under your roof and getting in
with the wrong crowds, they're doing drugs. There's just nothing
you can really do about that. But you're their parent
and they're under your roof, they are still so to speak,
you know, I mean legally right, you are the one
responsible for them. So that is entirely different than once
the children leave the house, in my opinion. So I
think that there's many stories out there actually of this
type of thing where you know, there's suicide issues in school.
So this is an example where a child starts, they're bullied,
and they start getting incredibly depressed, and their parent tries
to talk to the school about it and do what
they can, leaving their children in that environment, and I
would say that is the time when nothing else matters
at this point, I mean, nothing matters more than getting
your child out of that environment. That has got to
be the absolute top priority because it is their very life.
And if your child's involved in drugs in a certain
environment with certain friends, it has to be the number
one purpose of your life to get them out of
that environment and put them someplace else. And sometimes that
requires extreme sacrifice to do. And I'm not negating that,
but it is it's imperative.
Speaker 2: And I think.
Speaker 3: We've entered into a culture where it used to be
that parental sacrifice was valued and upheld. When one would
sacrifice their livelihood or their time or whatever it was
their life for their child, it was a virtue. But
it's almost been flipped where it's seen as almost more
virtuous to stick to your guns and could get goond
doing what you do and your kid will figure it out.
But I don't think that that has proven a very
wise course of action. Now it's different when the child
leaves the home, and that is where obviously you don't
have the same impact and effect. And so the best
I think that you're able to do. Your vocation at
that point is to be in constant prayer for your
child and to assist them as much as you can
with reorienting their sight back to the Cross. And again,
this is kind of why early childhood is important, because
we want them to be in a cycle of repentance
and forgiveness that's natural for them, that's normal, And to
have a relationship with Jesus Christ because he is their
one true shepherd, He is their salvation, and we want
to have that established and Lord willing it will carry through.
Speaker 1: I think you said one of the most powerful words here,
the p word prayer. How essential is that in getting
to a Christ centered childhood, a Christ's centered life.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I brought it up before.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious what you think about where all of
this is going, particularly as parents across the country say
enough is enough. Whether it's in public schools or community libraries.
They're saying, no, I don't want the transgender movement, you know,
in my kids' faces. I don't want you know, this
whole so called inclusion movement in you know, in liberal
politics and culture invading you know, my my nine year
old's life. I don't want content that is sexualized in
the hands of my children in schools. People are speaking up,
they're speaking out, and they're taking power. Where do you
see all of that going in this country?
Speaker 3: I think if we don't draw it back to the home,
then it's not going to go super far. We have
but if we if we do, and parents are willing
to say, I'm going to make changes within my own home.
And not only we want to try to do changes
within the schools and keep the trans ideology out, but
we also need to be doing that within our own home.
Speaker 2: That's really where the revolution is going to take place.
Speaker 3: If we cannot bring it back to like we talked
about having boundaries with our children and such, then they're
going to be exposed to all of this anyway. The
effects are going to be happening anyway, and so it
can almost serve as a distraction where we think we're
dealing with this problem because we're picketing, so to speak.
I mean, we're out there, you know, talking about it,
but we need to make sure that we're also willing
to roll up our sleeves and do the dirty, hard
work ourselves in the home environment. And I think if
that happens if we get to a point where we
say enough is enough, we know that this is not working.
Speaker 2: We need to go back to basics, you.
Speaker 3: Know, scrub all this that we have been believing is
the right way to go with child raising. That I
think we're headed in a good direction.
Speaker 1: How much is this from the loss over time of
at least the idea the concept of spare the rod,
spoil the child. I'm not talking necessarily about physical discipline.
I'm just talking in general about discipline. And the Lord
calls us as we have been disciplined under the Lord
for time, and calls upon us to make sure our
children understand that. And that's a foundational thing.
Speaker 3: I think we don't talk about it enough within the
Church and within Christendom, and in America at least. And
it is so incredibly important, both the discipline that we
receive from the Lord. And it says if you are
not disciplined, it says everyone is disciplined, then you are
illegitimate sons and not heirs. No discipline is pleasant at
the time, but painful, but it produces a harvest of
righteousness for those who have been trained by it. There
are so many incredibly numerous. There are so many verses
about the Lord disciplining us. And if he is love,
then disciplining is loving. He does it consistently, and so
we want to understand that when we are disciplining our
children and being watchful over their sin, that is being loving.
And if society says that that isn't love, we can know, well,
they don't have an accurate view of what love really is.
And along with that, along with discipline, is the importance
of instilling through discipline self discipline, because what we want
is for our children to be in that battle within
themselves and to be accustomed to it. And I think
we have unfortunately left all of it, the self discipline,
the discipline of children, discussion of being disciplined by the Lord,
all of it, and it's become this dirty topic, a
topic that just is not palatable anymore, and so we've
left it by the wayside. But it is an essential
component of being a Christian because we have sinful hearts.
We are wayward, you know, sheep, We wander away all
the time, and we have got to be brought back
for our own good. And so we want to value
discipline in its various forms and to understand that it
goes together as well with forgiveness of course, so when
you discipline your child, there's immediate and complete forgiveness that
needs to be there every single time. But we don't
want to treat it as some kind of dirty word
or thing that we want to stay away from. We
want to do this only solely because it's for the
good of our children.
Speaker 1: And grace obviously is absolutely central to all of this,
and I know absolutely you spell that out in your book.
Final question for you, speaking of your book, you offer
a lot of teaching you offer centered on, you know,
biblical teaching in your book. If you could you offer
a lot of advice, If you could offer parents one
key bit of advice to take away from your book,
what would it be.
Speaker 3: Value your children's faith, believe in their abilities, and take
advantage of this time because it is fleeting and it
is incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, is it ever fleeting. I told you
before that our oldest is off to college here in
a matter of days, and.
Speaker 2: Very exciting it is.
Speaker 1: It's so exciting, But it is also a moment of
you know, as I mentioned, anxiety and hope and all
kinds of feelings that you experience, and I know many
of our listeners have already experienced or about to experience it,
and it is quite a time in their lives, and
it's quite a time in the lives of parents. What
you hope ultimately is that what you have done over
the first seventeen eighteen years of their life is done
exactly what you're talking about in this book, and still
in them that they are loved not just by you,
but their Father in heaven, and hope that he always
and will keep them in his good careers.
Speaker 3: I would say that one last thing with that is
that it does say that raise up a child in
the way he should go, and when he is old,
he will not depart from it. And that is something
I cling to because I do think there is a
promise in there that when you have raised them up
and you're a sinner and you're not doing it perfectly
and God doesn't work through perfect you're raising them up
in the way they should go, then even if they stray,
you can bring that up to God that verse and
hold him to it. They will come back and trust
in that that they are going to come back and
be as fervent in prayer as we talked about as
Saint Augustine's mom, Monica was right where she just fervently,
fervently prayed for her son. And you don't know what
your child is called to do in the future, and
what beautiful things are in store for them, and so
we wait and hope and trust in the Lord's mercy
and love.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that the make my heart chase Lord? Just not yet? Yes,
I think there's plenty of that in the human condition,
the human experience. Thanks to my guest today, Kyle Town's,
author of The Road Less Traveled, Reclaiming Childhood for Christianity,
you've been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray. Who told you